In a world full of competing sounds, we often have to filter out a lot of noise to hear what’s most important. This critical skill may come more easily for people with musical training, according to scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute who used brain imaging to follow what happens when people try to focus their […]
Alan Lightman has spent much of his authorial career writing about scientific discovery, the boundaries of knowledge, and remarkable findings from the world of research. His latest book “The Shape of Wonder,” co-authored with the lauded English astrophysicist Martin Rees and published this month by Penguin Random House, offers both profiles of scientists and an […]
The first comprehensive map of mouse brain activity has been unveiled by a large international collaboration of neuroscientists. Researchers from the International Brain Laboratory (IBL), including McGovern Investigator Ila Fiete, published their findings today in two papers in Nature, revealing insights into how decision-making unfolds across the entire brain in mice at single-cell resolution. This […]
This story also appears in the Fall 2025 issue of BrainScan. ___ The question of how we know ourselves might seem the subject of philosophers, but it is just as much a matter of biology. As modern neuroscientists obtain an increasingly sophisticated understanding of how the brain generates emotions, responds to the external world, and […]
One in every eight people—970 million globally—live with mental illness, according to the World Health Organization, with depression and anxiety being the most common mental health conditions worldwide. Existing therapies for complex psychiatric disorders like depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia have limitations, and federal funding to address these shortcomings is growing increasingly uncertain. Patricia and James […]
From toddlers’ timeouts to criminals’ prison sentences, punishment reinforces social norms, making it known that an offender has done something unacceptable. At least, that is usually the intent—but the strategy can backfire. When a punishment is perceived as too harsh, observers can be left with the impression that an authority figure is motivated by something […]
Imagine a ball bouncing down a flight of stairs. Now think about a cascade of water flowing down those same stairs. The ball and the water behave very differently, and it turns out that your brain has different regions for processing visual information about each type of physical matter. In a new study, MIT neuroscientists […]
